Researchers who were curious about when ancient Europeans travelled to Africa followed the DNA. The route they discovered didn’t just track migration — it revealed pockets of resistance to the Neolithic revolution, as well as signs of sea-faring derring-do. A Societal ShiftDuring that period, starting around 12,000 years ago, societies started shifting from hunter-gatherers to farming. But not all of them. Most farmers from Anatolia (present-day Turkey) went on the move around 7,500 years ag ...read more

There are a lot of things that you might expect to see at an Australian high school. Backpacks filled to the brim with books? Sure. Forgotten pencils and half-finished pages of homework? Definitely. But a stone slab stamped with dozens of fossilized dinosaur tracks? That might be a little lower on your list.As surprising as it may seem, however, Biloela State High School in Queensland has long been home to one of Australia’s most footprint-filled stones from the Early Jurassic period. Describe ...read more

Art and literature have often depicted the creation of life with big, dramatic moments — often involving electricity.Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein got zapped into action. Michelangelo’s God (after six REALLY busy days) seemed to send an invisible but palpable spark into Adam’s extended finger, waking him into existence on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.The same is true for one scientific theory of life’s creation on Earth.Lightening and Life CreationThe theory states that a lightning bol ...read more

If humans could hijack photosynthesis — essentially, plants’ food factory — they could, in theory, capture carbon and produce hydrogen, both potentially helpful in fighting climate change. Absorbing carbon could slow climate change, and manufacturing hydrogen efficiently could create an alternative to CO2-producing fossil fuels.Figuring Out How to Harness PhotosynthesisPlants’ natural “factory” is both elegant and efficient: they absorb energy from the sun to process carbon dioxide a ...read more

When it comes to good overall health, the teeth are often overlooked. We tend to think of teeth as primarily cosmetic when in reality, oral health is linked to physical health and the risk of a number of chronic conditions. The mouth is a gateway to the rest of the organs, and when it becomes diseased, so too can the body.“Your mouth is the primary way bacteria enters your body. Bacteria can travel from areas like infected gums through the bloodstream to other parts of your body,” says Shash ...read more

Climate change has already begun to alter the environment in many ways, but scientists are also vigilantly watching for the ripple effects that will spread to human health. Now, they’re raising the alarm about exposure to viruses lingering in sewage as the world gears up for more frequent storms this century. A new study published in the journal Water Research warns of virus transmission through sewage systems, a public health risk that could grow in severity as wastewater continues to spill ...read more

The trick to long-lasting friendships, it turns out, may be nostalgia. According to a new study in Cognition and Emotion, people who think more about the past tend to have more friends, and it may be because they are more motivated to maintain their friendships over time.“People who feel nostalgic more often and value those memories are more aware of their important relationships and the need to nurture them,” said Kuan-Ju Huang, a study author and a psychology graduate student at Kyoto Univ ...read more

After discovering fossilized facial bones in Spain, researchers now say they’ve found the oldest face of Western Europe.In 2022, researchers with the Atapuerca Project uncovered facial bones from an early human ancestor at the Sima del Elefante site (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos) in northern Spain. The fossil date ranges from 1.1 million years to 1.4 million years old. After detailed study, researchers announced that the facial bones were not that of Homo antecessor, but of a different hominin. ...read more

When Lior Shamir, a scientist at Kansas State University, examined images from the James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), he saw something quite unexpected. The majority of the 263 galaxies he observed rotated in the same direction — with two thirds spinning clockwise, Shamir reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Why is this significant? In a random universe, galaxy rotations should be roughly split in two directions. The fact that t ...read more

Back in the 1940s, a Dutch physician called John Poel invented a device that changed the nature of heart monitoring. His device is based on the idea that the color of skin changes according to the amount of blood it contains. That’s easy to see in the way people quickly become red faced when exerting themselves,But it turns out more subtle color changes occur at rest as the heart pumps blood around the body. The ebb and flow of blood through capillary vessels changes the amount of light reflec ...read more